THE American public believes in miracles, in the power of sudden invention to stem national disaster. Perhaps it has substantial foundation for its faith—Ericsson’s “cheese box on a raft” came in the nick of time to save the Union fleet and keep intact the North’s blockade of the Confederacy ports, and our inventors, with submarines, aeroplanes, and torpedo improvements have shown that they can work miracles.

While we’re on the topic of Edison, what better way to memorialize him than with a giant light bulb.

Edison Memorial Bulb Ready

A GIANT electric light bulb, 14 feet high, which will surmount the $100,000 Edison Memorial Tower at Menlo Park, N. J., in commemoration of the invention of the incandescent lamp by the famous inventor, has been completed. The bulb, in position atop the 150-foot tower, will also serve as an airways beacon.

The bulb consists of 164 pieces of glass cast in two-inch diamond patterns around a steel skeleton frame. The interior features 960 incandescent lights and a 24-inch reflector.

The will of Thomas A. Edison, the world’s greatest inventor, who died in mid-October, disposes of property estimated to be worth $12,000,000. It would seem impossible, then, that he could have died a comparatively poor manâ€”yet this is the amazing conclusion of Remsen Crawford, Edison biographer and close friend of the inventor, who here presents proof in Edison’s own handwriting which indicates the inventor was “property poor.”

AS THE last man in this world to have had a personal interview with Thomas A. Edison, I am going to set down here exclusively in Modern Mechanics and Inventions the reasons why that great wizard died a poor man.

AMERICA’S No. 1 inventor just missed one of the greatest inventions of all time. But he discovered the clue that enabled others to perfect it.

Most of those who currently celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Alva Edison at Milan, Ohio, on February 11, 1847, remember him for his electric light, talking machine, and moving pictures.

Perhaps few, in contrast, ever heard of the Edison effect, to which we owe the vacuum tube and the marvels built around itâ€”radio, television, radar, electron microscopes, atom smashers, and unknown wonders still to come.